Home isn't a refuge for domestic violence victims

Going Home, Staying Home may sound like good advice in stormy weather, but is actually far more sinister. This government policy has, if anything, deepened the epidemic of women's violent deaths in Australia and intensified the veiled silence that surrounds it, purporting to sanctify the private while in fact profaning the feminine.

Of the 31 women killed violently in Australia in the first 15 weeks of this year, most were killed privately, in their homes. The deaths are documented on an excellent and well-researched page called Counting Dead Women Australia, set up by the feminist campaign Destroy the Joint. Most were stabbed, beaten, strangled or shot, at or near home, by closely related men and often after prolonged control-by-fear.

Of the 31 women killed violently in Australia this year, most were attacked in their own homes. Illustration: John Spooner

More shocking still is that most are still unknown to us. One or two, like Stephanie Scott and Prabha Arun Kumar, are familiar. They were killed in public in Leeton and Parramatta Park respectively. But in general the dead women, and the secret epidemic they represent, slip under the daylight.

What if 31 men had died? To get an idea, consider the one-punch outrage. Thomas Kelly (2012), Daniel Christie (2013), Barry Lyttle (2015): the names and stories of the men who died before and despite our sweeping one-punch laws are etched on our collective consciousness.

We were understandably appalled. The entire politico-legal system went into spasm, spewing out headlines, working groups, task forces, police squads, laws, mandatory eight-year sentences and megalitres of cultural Agent Orange with which to spray the lively jungle of Kings Cross nightlife, taking out every second club and bar.

Not that it's worked. As NSW Bar Association president Philip Boulten, SC, said at the time: "There's no evidence at all that mandatory sentencing ever decreases the amount of crime that's committed." Legal academic Dr Julia Quilter argues that mandatory sentencing over-punishes accidental crime and that "no Law Reform Commission in Australia has recommended the introduction of a specific one-punch law."

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As to the lockout? The government cites a 40 per cent drop in Kings Cross assaults as proof of success. In truth, however, a simultaneous 84 per cent drop in custom means a Kings Cross pedestrian is actually almost three times more likely to be assaulted now than before.

In our curious rubric of moral mass, then, men's public deaths outweigh entire city precincts and the dictates of logic. Women's deaths, being mostly private, barely shift the scales. What makes the difference – gender, or privacy? Or is it that old, old identification of the two?

People gather to lay flowers at a memorial site for victim Prabha Arun Kumar. Photo: Brendon Thorne

This is Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater territory, emphasis on the territory. Amazingly, many women, as well as many men, still see a man's preparedness to commit violence – even against the woman herself – as proof of passion, of a deep primal desire to sustain the family unit via strong (male) leadership and the big stick that backs it up.

Which no doubt explains why beaten women are so crazily stoic, suffering an average of 35 assaults before making a first complaint (and still – police believe – only 40-50 per cent of cases make it into official records).

Domestic abuse victim Salwa Haydar was allegedly stabbed to death by her husband inside her Bexley home.

Journalist Jenna Price, who set up Counting Dead Women Australia, has written about domestic violence for 35 years. Only now, she says, in establishing a rolling numerical toll, has she achieved any traction.

The nonchalance emerges even in the language we use. The very word "domestic" sounds like some benign personal tiff, easily sorted behind closed doors. When 45-year-old Salwa Haydar was killed last month, allegedly by her husband, the police reported a "domestic dispute at the home". In fact the mother-of-four was being stabbed to death in front of her daughter.

This is cultural relativism at its worst. Post-modern "pluralism" so easily legitimises the feudal idea of home as a legal no-go zone, a self-policing tribal fiefdom where might is always right. It's this double-think that condones sharia law or indigenous tribal exclusion zones within Western culture, guised as tolerance but effecting apartheid.

"You Muslim women," it says, or "you indigenous women," or perhaps "all you women," once you're at home, you no longer have the rights of other, public citizens. You're territory.

(This in my view is why the full hijab is unacceptable, since it effectively extends the domestic closet into the street, claiming the woman as territory wherever she goes, depriving her of any public existence.)

So, what can, or should be done? And why aren't we doing it?

Sure, there's talk of "doing something". Tony Abbott called in January for a national domestic violence scheme. This week he agreed with COAG that, in maybe a year, we could have national AVOs.

The rest have been re-tendered as general homeless shelters, and while homeless shelter is of course welcome, what you don't do with vulnerable women and children in times of desperate need is house them with men who are disproportionately given to mental and substance-abuse issues. You don't pretend to women who've been relentlessly controlled, watched and stalked that CCTV cameras will keep them safe. You don't – as one Salvo-run refuge in Broken Hill did recently – turn away women who cannot pay. With demand so high that every second woman is turned away, you don't allow refuges to open only three days-a-week, or strictly in business hours.

You don't allow women like 26-year-old hairdresser Leila Alavi to be turned away from shelter after shelter as she desperately seeks refuge from an allegedly violent husband who violates his AVO, and allegedly stabs her to death in her car.

You recognise that in real women's real lives there are times when going home, staying home is diametrically not the answer. And you make women count.